25 March 2008

As I noted
last November, a judge overturned most
of the convictions of the members of the Restored Israel of Yahweh who had
been prosecuted for their war tax resistance and convicted in
2005.

Earlier this month, they were resentenced on the remaining counts.
Attorney Peter Goldberger filed a report, which I excerpt below:

Joe Donato, Inge Donato and Kevin McKee were re-sentenced… following the
appellate reversal of twelve counts of employment tax evasion with which they
had been charged, and the appellate ruling that Inge was also innocent of the
two counts of alleged failure to file personal income tax returns for which
the jury convicted her (as she had no taxable income in those years). There
is more good news than bad.

Prior to resentencing, the government elected to dismiss the overturned
counts, rather than conduct a retrial. Unfortunately, because the Third
Circuit appeals court affirmed all three defendants’ convictions for
conspiracy to defraud the United States in relation to those same employment
taxes, they all ended up convicted of a felony, which in turn supported
reimposition of almost the same sentences as originally. All received new
prison sentences of the time they had already served following their original
sentencings in 2005 — 6 months for Inge, 27
months for Joe, and 24 months for Kevin. Although, incredibly, the prosecutor…
asked that they be given longer prison terms, the judge gave that
thought no consideration at all. However, Judge Simandle did reimpose the
same fines ($50,000 on Inge, $5,000 on Joe, and $4,000 on Kevin), all of
which had already been paid by their religious society.

On the bright side, however — and most important — the judge modified the
terms of all three defendants’ post-incarceration supervised release… which
runs for 3 years from their respective release dates. First, even though they
are all now “convicted felons,” the judge ruled they can freely associate
with one another, which would normally be prohibited. Second, for the express
purpose of “accommodating” their religious beliefs, the judge changed the
standard requirement of “regular gainful employment” to allow Joe and Kevin
to substitute charitable or community service for paid employment, so they
can keep their income below the taxable level while under supervision and
thus avoid a further conflict with the government. (Inge is disabled form
working, so that wasn’t a problem for her.)

Most gratifying, the judge clarified and modified the original special
condition that they “fully cooperate with the
IRS by
filing all returns and paying current and delinquent taxes” to say instead
that by August they must file all
delinquent and current returns, to the extent required by law, going back 10
years — but he dropped the specification that they have to pay, so far as the
court’s conditions are concerned. That, he expressly left to the
IRS
and its ordinary administrative remedies. This is what we had requested, and
it removed our greatest worry. The
RIOY
defendants have reconsidered where they draw the line, and are now willing to
file, although still not to pay. (The judge actually suggested they consider
paying the non-military percentage of their taxes, which he speculated would
be “more than 50%.” I didn’t offer him a pie chart.)

The judge came very close to terminating Inge’s supervision entirely as of
today, but in the end deferred that until the returns are filed. All three
defendants gave very moving statements to the judge prior to sentencing.… All
in all, it was not a bad day; we got about 85–90% of what we were hoping for.
It is very unlikely there would be any further appeal.

Some people think that a good tactic is to withhold some amount of their taxes
due, in order to prevent the government from using that money to finance its
empire-building. This is a symbolic gesture, at best, because it’s not going
to prevent the government from monetizing more debt and stealing the value of
your savings through inflation.

Consider withholding all or part of your Federal Income Tax until
US troops are
withdrawn from the Middle East. Tax-resistance is a time-honored and
courageous form of protest (purely symbolic because of borrowing and deficit
spending, but I can look at myself in the mirror because I don’t contribute
any of my money to the war machine).

I’ve seen this argument before, and it really frustrates me.

It’s like a military commander saying “well, if we confidently defend our left
flank, the enemy will just attack us from the right, so we might as well not
bother.”

The government has many tools that it can use to raise funds to buy what it
wants, or, hell, it can just steal what it wants if it comes down to it. But
each of these options has a set of costs to the government, and at any time,
the government will likely choose from these many options the one that costs
the least (give-or-take government stupidity, inefficiency, lack of foresight
and so forth). It’s a perfectly reasonable thing for anti-government
activists to want to restrict these choices or to try to make the
choice that is currently most favorable to the government less so.

If the government is currently funding something with tax dollars rather than
with seigniorage or debt, it’s presumably doing this because, for whatever
reason, it finds it advantageous to do so. If we can make the government fall
back on its second-best choice, one that costs the government more — that
counts as a (small, partial) victory. It’s going to take a lot of such small,
partial victories to add up to any big wins, but that doesn’t mean that such
victories are failures or “purely symbolic” things. Making the opposition
expend ever more resources to meet its goals is the slow, steady path to
victory.

This sort of “it’s only symbolic, it’s not really important” thinking is
usually accompanied by gestures of capitulation. Mr. Z goes on to say that
“all efforts to resist paying a portion of one’s income taxes are essentially
futile, because one is still paying all other forms of taxes…” In other words,
I may as well not fight the battle, because even if I win, I still won’t have
won the war.

Mr. Z’s call for anarchists to “lead the way for ‘off the books’ transactions,
making them more available” is followed not by some good examples of how
he does this, but with what seems to be a demand that these
anarchists be more-or-less completely victorious in this task before he joins
them: “Find me a way to buy my house, agorist-style, and I’ll listen.”

(Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, lists a number of actions individuals can
take, and notes that “Nothing will change as long as we sit around wringing
our hands and whining that there is nothing that we can do about the mess
we’re in.” That’s more like it.)

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